University Judo at the 2019 North Island Judo Competition

University Judo had nine members competing at the North Island Judo Championships this weekend at Westlake Boys High School. Of those nine, all but two managed to medal.

Day One
The medals started in the morning with the Cadets and Junior Women where Phoebe, in her first competition outing since NZ Secondary Schools Nationals, managed to become a triple North Island Champion, winning golds in the Cadet Womens, Junior Womens and Senior Womens Under 52kg category. Jaime also fought in the morning and had a spirited effort in three fights (in her first ever North Islands competition.

Next came the big lads, with Kane, scoring gold in the Senior Mens Under 90kg and moving up to win another gold in the Senior Mens Under 100kg category. In the Over 100kg category we also had Chris, who gave 149kg Keightley Watson some trouble and even scored a waza-ari on him in the first fight. They would both also compete in the Senior Mens Open where Kane scored a silver to add to his bling collection.

Later in the afternoon the bellies got significantly thinner. In the under 73kg category, Tank made some seasoned black belts work hard for their wins while The Hairy Frog, Quentin scored a bronze in the under 66kg category. It should be noted that the under 66kg champion was Antoine, who, while representing his Wanganui club, has been training at University this year while finishing off his university studies.

All in all, in Day 1, University scored seven medals overall, with good support throughout the day.

Day Two

In contrast to Day One, Day Two started a bit older, with the Veterans competition kicking off the morning.

Starting in order of seniority, Professor Stu won a gold medal in the 40+ under 90kg category while Fabio won the 40+ under 73kg category. In the 30+ under 73kg category, Quentin and Tank managed to score gold and silver respectively. After this, Stu would add to his medal tally with a silver in the Veterans Open.

In the younger and considerably less wrinkled categories, representing University for the first time since joining us this year was Aly, whose training with the adult classes (as a 13 year old), paid off with a Senior Boys Under 66kg gold medal. He would follow this up with a Senior Boys Bronze later in the afternoon.

Day two finished with seven medals, giving us 14 to cap off a successful North Island Championships Weekend.